The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1887-06-09

II Christmas at Sinneput Manor
f There was postscript, briei
s and underscored:
y ~ hope Mr.. Rolts ,ciH Be able TO come.
"E c."
Even the fact that she had signed her ini-
tials instead of her name stirred his feelings.
i seemed to be the suggestion of a confiden-
tIal relation that he was expected to under
sand
II was lovely Vision that stood smiling
before him in his musing-a clear, trans
parent complexion, flashing black eyes, a
stately bearing. She had inherited the
beauty and wit of her mother, an accom-
plished English lady whom Mr.. Craydocke
had won to be the mistress of his Maryland
home and whose death was still q poignant
sorrow.
The old manor-house and its hearty en-
joyments came before him. A part of the
scene, but out of lace in it, there was his old
self-a quiet, studious, moody young man,
Mr.. Henry Craydocke's private secretary by
title, but really a sort of upper servant, for
he had been bought by the lord of the
manor, one among shipload of convicts and
redemptioners sold at Annapolis into service
for a term of years to pay the expenses of
their passage to Lord Baltimore's planta-
tions. Who he really was he did not know.
He remembered having happy home and a
loving widowed mother before he was kid
mapped by crimp in an English seaport
town and shipped across the sea. His fate
was not an extraordinary one for so great
was the demand for labor in the tobacco
plantations in the provinces that the exporta-
tiOn of servants was a profitable business,
and kidnapping was not unusual. Craydocke
took the trouble to write to correspondents in
England about the case, but got no tidings of
the boys family.
Rolfe would have never dared to entertain
thought of love for Edith Craydocke had
she not encouraged him. There was strong
element of coquetry in her nature, not so
well restrained as it would have been had she
lad mothers care. She was not indiffer-
ent to the companionship of an intellectual
man; nor could she resist the temptation to
zee whether her arts were as effective against
this proud, sensitive, self-contained spirit
: ~ upon the boisterous and ELUSIVE planters.
It was cruel piece OF work, and its progress
was frequently interrupted by self-reproaches.
The idea of permitting the ex-servant to ad-
dress the heiress of Sinneput Manor she never
entertained for a moment, while she fully
recognized his superiority to the other men
with whom she came in contact. But his
pride and self-control were challenge to
her powers of fascination that she would not
forego.
It was painful subjection to him. It was
not alone that he brooded over this fair
creature with love that was unspeakable, but
his heart was also subjected to the corrosions
of jealousy. He detested Lord Creighton,
the insolent London fop who had come over
from England in Governor Sharpes train,
md was amusing himself by making love
to Miss Craydocke. Creighton had a strong
admiration for the colonial beauty, and in his
braggart letters to London cronies expatiated
with great warmth upon the attractions of
the game he was pursuing.
Lord Creighton disliked Rolfe the more so
- the latter was once witness to humiliat-